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Jack Harvey Krieger

PFC Jack H. Krieger served with Able Company, First Battalion, 18th Marines.
He was killed in action at the battle of Tarawa on 20 November 1943.

Created by potrace 1.16, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2019

Branch

Marine Corps Regular
Service Number 371423

Created by potrace 1.16, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2019

Current Status

Accounted For
as of 31 January 2018

Created by potrace 1.16, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2019

Recovery Organization

Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
and
History Flight 2013 Expedition
Read DPAA Press Release

History

Personal Summary

Jack Harvey Krieger was born in Larned, Kansas on 19 August 1915. He spent most of his life in the Pawnee County seat where his parents, Harve and Frances Etelka Krieger, worked as morticians and funeral directors. Jack attended Larend High School and Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Missouri, earning two years of college credit.

 

By 1940, the Kriegers were living at 1021 Broadway – the stately Vernon Funeral Home. Jack was evidently planning to continue the family business. When he registered for Selective Service, he told the board he was “self employed” at the funeral home.

Service Details

Jack went off to war on 25 April 1942; after completing boot camp in San Diego, he was assigned to duty with the Second Engineer Battalion and shipped overseas. His unit was redesignated as the First Battalion, 18th Marines (Engineers) while in New Zealand, and Private Krieger got his first taste of combat on Guadalcanal while attached to the 6th Marines.

 

“I am sitting under a coconut tree, listening to the shells sail over my head and slapping at mosquitos at odd moments,” he wrote from the battlefield. “Not very exciting so far as I haven’t seen the enemy, but have heard the snipers’ bullets sing. The undertaking business would be good here. If I had the equipment, I would hang out my shingle and go to work.”

 

Krieger survived Guadalcanal unwounded, but one of those mosquitoes may have landed him in the hospital with malaria. During the summer of 1943, as he received his promotion to private first class, he made a few trips to sick bay for an unstated ailment.

 

Most of Jack Krieger’s time in New Zealand was spent training and preparing for the next invasion – Operation GALVANIC, or the invasion of Tarawa.

Loss And Burial

On 20 November 1943, A/1/18th Marines landed on Betio in support of the assaulting infantry battalions. They came under fire as they jumped out of their landing craft, and suffered heavy casualties right on the beach before gradually moving ashore.

 

One of those who fell in action on the first day of fighting was PFC Krieger. A casualty report states that he died of multiple gunshot wounds on 20 November 1943, at the age of twenty eight.

 

After the battle, PFC Krieger was reportedly buried in the Central Division Cemetery (8th Marines #1), Row A, Grave 34.

A memorial marker was later placed in Cemetery 25, Grave 11, Row 1, Plot 1.

Recovery

In 1946, personnel of the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company traveled to Betio and exhumed the remains of hundreds of Marines. Many of these lacked even the most basic means of identification, and the location of the bodies bore no relation to markers found above. The remains were all reburied in a new cemetery called “Lone Palm” before eventual transfer to the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii.

 

One set of remains exhumed from “Cemetery 25” and reburied in Lone Palm Plot 2, Row 8, Grave 13, arrived in Hawaii as “Betio X-224.” He could not be identified by the 604th, or by the anthropologists in Hawaii, and was buried in Plot E, Grave 518 of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific as an unknown.

 

In 2013, non-profit organization History Flight conducted an archaeological dig at the site of Cemetery 25 and retrieved numerous human remains. These were turned over to the Department of Defense for further analysis.

 

Four years later, X-224 was exhumed yet again and brought to the lab for examination. Some of the bones found by History Flight were matched to this unknown, and with the new information – plus dental and DNA evidence – he was finally identified as Jack Harvey Krieger on 10 January 2018.

 

Krieger was officially accounted for on 31 January 2018.

Decorations

Purple Heart

For wounds resulting in his death, 20 November 1943.

Next Of Kin Address

Address of parents, Harvey & Etelka Krieger.

Location Of Loss

PFC Krieger was killed in action at an unspecified location on Betio island.

For more photos of Jack Krieger and his family, visit the Santa Fe Trail Center Museum & Library.

Betio Casualties From This Company

(Recently accounted for or still non-recovered)
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